Surprising Ways With Which Your Website Can Be Hacked

This era is highly influenced by the new ways of advancement which in turn also affecting the security of a website. For a mere transaction of recharge or online shopping, an eCommerce site demands your payment details. This is from where attackers plan to intrude. But, it is not the only place to get infection from during the course of custom Magento development.

There are plenty of other aspects that attackers keep in mind. It can be stealing your data, taking control on your computer system and shutting down your website. Before controlling them, you must be aware of different methods with which these type of attacks are carried out.

Let’s check major one of them-

Symbolic Linking

A symbolic link is a simple method used to hack Linux servers. It is essentially a shortcut just like Microsoft users know and use. Hackers deploy these symlinks to gain access to the server’s root directory where user has limited access to it.

A hacker can produce a symbolic link from his directory with limited permissions to the root directory with almost no permissions at all. For instance, for a company employee who is having a limited access to the root server, it is a cakewalk to perpetuate an inside job by using a symbolic link.

If a hacker has access to the root server, he can change files and file permissions, expose data and insert malicious code.

Clickjacking

Clickjacking can be understood as a process to manipulate user clicks of a website by concealing hyperlinks beneath a clickable content that a user is genuinely interested in. For example, a video plays button. This technique makes it easy for the attackers to trick website surfers for clicking a link that they are not aware of.

However, the intentions behind this clicking are less related with hacking and more with the ad clicks. In case this clickjacking is malicious, the attacker can send the victim to some other website. This is another type of attack similar to cross-site scripting attack.

Third-party Access

Most of the websites running over the web utilize plugins, widgets and other integrated components. This might lead to some vulnerabilities and in turn degradation in performance of your website. In most cases, developers update their software on a regular basis to prevent hackers from using discovered exploits.

Content management systems like Joomla and Drupal are more susceptible to be targeted in such a fashion. The reason is that plugins and widgets are the primary sources for design and content.

Outdated Scripts

Scripts are the major element in developing a website that controls everything from graphics to databases. That’s why, they are the common target for hackers to gain control of the website itself. When a script is detected to be an exploit, developers are supposed to create updates in order to prevent cyber attacks.

If we go in broad, even the installation scripts for web-based applications, plugins and add-ons make your website to be in easy access to the hackers.

Phishing

It is a hacking technique with which a hacker replicates the most-accessed sites and traps the victim by showing them that spoofed link. When combined with social engineering, it can be used as the deadliest attack vector.

When a victim tries to login or enters some data, the hacker gets the confidential information of the target victim through the trojan which is running on the fake site.

Cookie Theft

The cookie files of a browser keep personal data like browsing history, username and passwords for different websites that you access. Once a hacker gets the access to your cookie, he can authenticate himself on a browser as you.

This process is also called as SideJacking or Session Hijacking and an easy method to carry out this attack is by encouraging user’s IP packets to pass through intruder’s machine.

This attack is easy to implement in case user is not using SSL (https) for his entire session. If you are entering your password and banking details, it is utterly important for the site owners to make their connections encrypted.

Hosting and Server

A hosting provider with weak security protocol can put your site to the unwanted attention of hackers. Once it’s discovered that your hosting provider’s shared server is easy to attack, a hacker can easily hack any of the sites with vulnerabilities. As one shared server can host thousands of websites, there are probable chances of finding more number of vulnerable sites.

It is also noted that when one site on a shared server has been hacked, it can be easily used to hack other sites on the same shared server. This process is called as cross-site contamination and it works well even with good hosting security protocols in place.

Wrapping Up

There is no fixed formula to stay away from security threats in Magento web development. The best way is to remain protected and even then if you get affected, try to resolve them as earlier as you can, in easy and effortless manner. The only intent here is to be safe so that your customers will also remain in the safe hands. The internet is both boon and bane. Now, decision is purely yours, in which way you need to mold it.

About the Author

The writer of this blog post is Paul Schroer. He is an expert web developer and writer at PSDtoMagentoDeveloper, a leading Magento web development company. His write-up illustrates the basic security concepts to keep your Magento website secured from each corner.